The Oregon Trail (1971) — Games Considered The Best #1

A group of children huddle together in their school’s dimly lit computer lab. Drawn towards the glowing CRT monitor, they peek over the shoulder of the lucky kid at the keyboard. On screen, an oxen and cart slowly move across a vast, pixelated American frontier.

In that moment, those kids aren’t just learning about history- they’re living it. They come to personally understand the struggle of American pioneers: the days under a hot, grueling sun, as rations are parceled out to keep everyone fed until the next trading outpost; the fear that at any moment, disaster could strike, and they could lose everything; the feeling of anticipation as you creep ever closer to the star on the map.

This scene has played out across thousands of schools all around America, with different computer labs, pieces of hardware, and versions of the game. But no matter the circumstances, one thing remains the same- the story the game tells isn’t just of the American pioneers- it’s the children’s story, too.

This is The Oregon Trail.

Hi, everyone! Welcome to the first installment of Games Considered the Best, where I take a look at all 260 games Wikipedia says are the best of all time. First up is an entry that surprised me a little- The Oregon Trail. So much of the videogame history that I knew of began with Pong, in 1972- but according to The List, The Oregon Trail was made in 1971, making it technically the first game to cover.

Technically.

You see, The Oregon Trail is tricky to talk about, because it isn’t just one game. According to Wikipedia, it’s at least twenty-four games. This isn’t going to be the first game with multiple editions we talk about, but it is (probably) going to be the trickiest to pick a copy, for reasons that will become clear once we take a deeper dive into this game’s history.

It’s 1971 in Minnesota. Our story begins when three public school student teachers- Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger- were looking for a way to make Don’s grade 8 US History class more engaging. Don needed a way to keep the class interested when talking about the real-life Oregon Trail, which was a wagon trail that American settlers took in the mid-1800s to start new lives on the West Coast.

Originally, the idea was to create a board game, where students could roll to travel across the American landscape and encounter random unfortunate circumstances, but the sheer scope of the idea- the volume and complexity of the factors involved in this experience- made it unwieldy for a paper-and-dice board game. This is when Bill suggested ‘translating’ the game into a computer program.

As you probably could infer by the big 1971 in the title of this article, this was the early days of computers- back when they took up entire rooms and only a small handful of people were even aware of them, let alone knew how to use them. Bill and Paul were only capable of pulling this off in the 2 weeks they had to prepare because in the previous term, they had happened to take one of the few computer programming classes offered by his school.

Something that always strikes me, as I look into game history, is how much the development of this medium depended on certain people happening to be in the right place at the right time.

So the three friends got to work, with Don drawing up the historical details and Bill and Paul spending long nights programming something that would ultimately grow further than they had ever imagined. The bones of the original board game idea remained in place, determining a lot of design aspects- a random “roll” would calculate events, the player success would be determined by the risk/reward of the gear they decided to bring, etc.

The switch to a computer game format, however, brought new possibilities they hadn’t even considered. Suddenly, much more complex ‘simulation’ elements were on the table, since they didn’t need to rely on a human game operator needing to understand complex rules. You could change the likelihood of events based on dozens of variables- the location of the player, the time of year, the weather, the items they’ve carried with them, and more. This “predictable dynamism” would become key to the ultimate success and longevity of The Oregon Trail, for reasons we’ll get into when we actually talk about the game.

For now, it suffices to say that Don’s class really, really loved the game. Even at its most basic form- there wasn’t even a screen, the game was played by typing on a teletype that sent the responses to a mainframe computer and spat out the answers on a sheet of paper- there was something instantly compelling about the project. Kids felt drawn to the world the game painted, and immediately began forming teams to minmax the game- figure out exactly how many supplies to carry, how hard to push when traveling, whether or not to caulk the wagon. This urge for optimization would be one of the main drivers of the game’s popularity in the future.

In a lot of stories, this is the point where the entrepreneurial students would realize they had a hit on their hands, and would rush to develop this as a retail product so they could cash in on their idea and spread their great game to the world. The real story, however, is a lot messier.

The idea of monetizing or spreading their game any further simply didn’t occur to any of the students. They weren’t thinking about The Oregon Trail as a product- they weren’t even really thinking about it as a game. This was an educational tool, useful specifically for teaching Don’s 8th grade history class, and to be immediately discarded afterwards. There was no desire to preserve or share it- why would they need to?

Luckily for video game history, however, Don kept his source code around. While he never took it to play with a class again, in 1974, (needing a job as a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam) he would be hired by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. The MECC was a government-run entity that delivered educational software to interconnected computers in schools and students across the state (which was a rather novel idea in 1974!). On a whim, he rewrote and uploaded the source code of the game onto the MECC network. And suddenly, as The Oregon Trail became instantly available to hundreds of educators and thousands of students across the state, it began to spread.

By the late 80s, MECC had begun ramping up the process of licensing and distributing their games outside of Minnesota schools- particularly The Oregon Trail, which had become by far their most popular product. The game really took off once a graphical version was developed in 1985 for the Apple II, a popular computer produced by a niche technology company you probably haven’t heard of- and the rest is history.

So why is The Oregon Trail game on the list? What about it was so notable and ground-breaking to make it one of the Greatest Games of All Time? After playing the 1990 MS-DOS version of the game (a clone of the 1985 Apple II version), I think I’ve pinpointed the reasons why.

First, the game is remarkably effective as an edutainment tool because it encourages learning without making it mandatory. There’s all sorts of bad edutainment that shoves the education down the throats of students, and it rarely sticks because it feels like homework. Kids don’t want to do homework. What they do want to do is win, and the risk/reward systems of The Oregon Trail incentivise knowing about the actual Oregon Trail.

Next, it also has the honor of being one of the first, most widespread “simulation” games. While not the first by any means, it would quickly become the most widespread and iconic. It was an early example of the power of computer systems to create a “digital environment”- with all the complexity and real-world implications that entails.

Finally, The Oregon Trail was the introduction to video games, or even computers, for millions of children across the United States. This fact makes it very foundational to a lot of people’s understanding of video games, which is multiplied by how generational the game has become, with dozens and dozens of rereleases keeping the game relevant for decades. The game’s ubiquity has cemented its impact across multiple generations.

I’m sure we’ve all played bad edutainment games before. At least growing up, I remember our class heading to my elementary school’s computer lab once a week to play ancient learning games on even more ancient computers. While I liked getting the break from classwork (and even began to develop an interest in tinkering with technology), I can’t say the games we played made much of an impression, let alone taught me anything.

Looking back, I think it’s because those games were, for lack of a better phrase, condescending. They were extremely, blatantly obvious about what I was supposed to be learning, and they were about teaching first, fun second. Counterintuitively, I feel like this focus on learning makes them worse at teaching. Hyperactive kids in the computer lab (like me) will get bored and frustrated by a “game” where all you do is type words into a text box after being prompted by a cartoon rabbit.

Exploring the American frontier, though? That would get my attention.

The biggest educational asset The Oregon Trail has is that learning isn’t mandatory- just incentivized. You don’t need to learn about the different landmarks and environmental conditions along the trail- but if you want to make it to Oregon and beat your buddy’s high score, you’ll probably need to. The effect is that children start to want to learn this material of their own free will, and as such, it sticks much, much better.

This concept adds a sense of mastery to what is, at its core, an extremely simple gameplay system. I was surprised, in fact, by just how little control the player actually has over the way events unfold. You can pick what to buy, when/where to trade, your speed, and very rarely pick a way along a branching path, but very little else. There’s not much room for learning or experimentation in terms of the things you can actually do- all the actions are presented as a rote numbered list.

In addition, there’s a lot of things that can happen to the player completely outside of their control. A wagon can break down, an ox can get sick, all your clothes can burn down, and once these things happen, there’s nothing you can do about it. In a lesser game, this lack of options and lack of control could be deeply frustrating, as there would be no room for a player to grow and improve, which is one of the key elements of a satisfying game.

But in The Oregon Trail, knowledge is how you exert agency. By learning about the mechanics of the game (and, by extension, about American history), you begin to be able to plan for and mitigate the effects of those random disasters. The few options you have to control your journey become a toolbox of options, where you’re incentivized to experiment and tweak until you’ve mastered the frontier. The game isn’t making this learning mandatory, but the design makes players want to do it. The skill gap in The Oregon Trail is really a knowledge gap, and the only way to compete is to learn.

But The Oregon Trail is notable for more than just being an exceptional learning tool- it’s also one of the first widespread examples of the simulation genres, which aim to (as the name might suggest) allow the player to participate in a simulacrum of some real-life profession, experience, or moment in history, with as much accuracy as possible.

While The Oregon Trail was not the first simulation game (that honor goes to The Sumerian Game, a 1964 resource management computer game, developed by Mabel Adams, also a teacher), it was one of the most widespread and effective, thanks to its deep systems and broad reach across hardware and generations. It’s a showcase of what’s unique about games as an entertainment medium- it’s one thing to read about the economic and physical hardships that early pioneers faced, and another to actually have to make their tough decisions for yourself. Of course, for most players these decisions weren’t actually life and death, but if the game has done its job and immersed you into its world, they have the same emotional weight.

This position as one of the first and most iconic simulation games put The Oregon Trail on a pedestal, and a lot has been said about its specific simulation- how the game’s rules construct a representation of life in the American frontier, what it includes in this representation, and what it doesn’t include- most notoriously, any representation of how the Native Americans were affected by the westward expansion this game represents.

I should say upfront that I’m probably not the best person to discuss this. I’m not Native American (I’m not American at all), and I never played The Oregon Trail growing up. It wasn’t responsible for shaping my views of that particular period in US history. But I also don’t think an honest discussion about the impact and legacy of this game is complete without at least trying to reckon with this uncomfortable part.

There’s probably multiple overlapping reasons why the Native American experience was not the priority, but the main reason is simply the goals of The Oregon Trail as a game and as a piece of educational material- to teach about the movement of the American settlers, a goal rooted in the curriculum of the elementary school class the game was originally designed for. Teaching about how the Natives were pushed out as the white men moved in was not really the point.

Of course, many argue that maybe it should have been.

In the end, The Oregon Trail is (for better and worse) a product of the culture that created it, where these issues were just not a priority for the people who make decisions in American society. And as society progresses, progress gets made: the 2021 Apple Arcade version of The Oregon Trail makes a valiant effort to update depictions of Native Americans, and acknowledge how, to them, settlers moving in meant they often had to move out.

But it’s important to acknowledge that when a game is presenting itself as an accurate simulation of life on the real Oregon Trail, it is also presenting itself as an argument about the realities of that particular moment through the struggles and challenges it chooses to represent, or what it chooses not to address. By presenting a version of events that is not holistically true, the game fails its audience.

All of the elements we’ve talked about so far are interesting in that they aren’t unique to The Oregon Trail. There had been edutainment and simulation games before and after the game was released- so what’s the difference here? Why has The Oregon Trail gotten itself enshrined into gaming history?

I think the difference is how The Oregon Trail has become the widespread entry for millions of people into gaming or even computing, spanning decades and generations. It’s a shared cultural experience that binds together Americans across all ages and demographics, and helped build gaming literacy in students across the country.

This pseudo-shareware nature of the game has its roots in the uploading of the source code to the MECC servers in 1974. Once a game made for a single classroom, The Oregon Trail became accessible to hundreds of schools across Minnesota, becoming an early viral hit as word spread about the effectiveness and fun of the game. Soon enough, MECC would see and act upon the opportunity to spread it across the country. Between dozens of releases and thousands of schools, millions of students have experienced The Oregon Trail, which not only taught them about the real Oregon Trail, but about the power and potential of video games.

Game Literacy is one of the most important hurdles to overcome in the pursuit of more people playing games. For people who never grew up playing video games, it’s easy to see the medium as an incomprehensible system of buttons and controllers that aren’t worth the trouble to learn. Of course, we know that isn’t true, but in this case, the perception is as important as the reality.

The biggest impact The Oregon Trail gave its players was simply exposure to the medium of video games. It was dedicated class time to demystify the idea of gaming, and to get kids used to the terminology, controls and systems of action->result that is so fundamental to the medium. It’s impossible to know exactly how many gamers and even game developers can trace their interest in the medium directly back to The Oregon Trail, but I imagine it is immense. That kind of impact has silent ripples throughout all of gaming history.

So that is The Oregon Trail: a small class project that, through technological advances and events the creators could never have foreseen, became the most iconic and widespread edutainment game of all time. It’s a deeply engaging experience that manages to subtly encourage learning in a rich simulation of the American frontier, all while introducing millions of people to the world of video games- fully earning its place on the list of Games Considered The Best.

~~~

With that, we have completed article #1! This took much, much longer than I had hoped- turns out getting a Computer Science degree is a lot of work! I’m off for the summer though, and now that I’ve found a job, hopefully I can spend more time working on this. I’m aiming to get something out every 2 weeks, but who knows if that’s reasonable.

(And it took me so long to finish article #1 that the number of games on this list went from 237 to 260… I’m never finishing this, am I lol?)

Anyways, next up is Game #2: Pong (1972), the game that the modern video game industry owes almost everything to. The success of and reactions to Pong is really interesting, and I’m looking forward to getting to go over in way too much detail.

I hope to see you there!

Owen